From Sorrow To Joy

Well, I mentioned last weekend that Laurie and I had the real blessing of going on a brief visit to my relatives in Switzerland. Many of you know that I'm a Swiss American, and this is the view for my relatives' backyard. So it's a real hardship to go and visit my relatives. By the way, did you know that St. Patrick is the reason that Switzerland is Christian? Well-known fact, his monks went down from Ireland into Switzerland and evangelized as missionaries my home country. And so, you know, St. Patrick's has a Swiss connection, so I'm better than Valerie in many ways.

But among many other relatives, we got to visit my 94-year-old Uncle Wolf and his wife, Aunt Silva. Yes, his name is Wolf. I mean, I feel cooler just having an Uncle Wolf because, you know, René, anyway. Uncle Wolf told me a story behind a statue that he has in his house that ties into our family history, and it's a story I had never heard before. And it was so touching to me.

So my mom and Wolf's younger brother, Hannes, died in a plane crash years ago, and I still remember getting that phone call when I was just a kid, Wolf on the phone telling us, "Hannes is dead." And of course, we were all devastated. My grandmother was, of course, devastated to lose her youngest son. But here's the rest of the story. When she came over to visit Wolf at his house, she was a little surprised to see how crushed Wolf was by the loss. And here's why. Wolf and my mom were raised in an atheist household by my atheist grandparents, who at the time of Hannes' death were still both pretty strident atheists.

And Wolf had become a believer in Jesus as an adult, as had my mother. But when my grandma showed up, she could see that Wolf was still just devastated by the death. And I think she was a little surprised, like, "Well, don't you Christians believe in, like, life after death and stuff? How come this is crushing you so much?" And my grandmother was not above mocking our faith. I heard her do that many times to me. But this time, Grandma just looked at Wolf, who was crying, hugged him, and left without another word, and came back several days later with this sculpture that she had carved herself.

She was a professional artist of Jesus comforting a young man. And Wolf told me that when she put that on the table, he was completely speechless. He had no idea she was making this, completely surprised. And in the moment that I took these photos, he was telling me this story for the very first time. And he said, "You know, she was not a believer, but she understood the power that Wolf could find in the comfort of Jesus Christ." So this was kind of her sympathy card to Wolf. She was saying, "My son, take comfort in your Jesus, because you believe in Him, and you really need Him now."

And I think she was tapping into a truth about Jesus Christ. Many, many times in the Gospels, you see Jesus comforting people. And we see Him doing it in the passage we're going to look at today, in rich, deep ways. In a moment when He Himself was really the one who could have used comfort, Jesus Christ. It's just kind of classic Jesus, isn't it? He instead comforts other people who maybe should have been the ones comforting Him. And listen, if you are down today for any reason, if you feel helpless, hopeless, guilty, lost, Jesus Christ is here today for you with comfort like that too.

Let's talk about it. Grab your message notes. Stay strong and carry on is what we've been calling our Lenten series, our series in the 40 days leading up to Easter. We've been going through the Upper Room Discourse. That's what it's called. This is in the New Testament of the Bible, the Gospel of John, chapters 13 through 17. And it's so rich. You know, we're all very familiar, anybody in the world, with this iconography, right, of Jesus and the disciples at the Last Supper. But I think many people don't understand the context for this.

The Bible says this is the very last night of Jesus' life before the crucifixion. And He knows what's about to come down. He knows He's going to betray. He knows He's going to be betrayed. He knows who's going to betray Him. He knows He's going to be arrested. He knows He's going to be crucified in just hours. And so He gathers His closest friends and followers and reveals to them the shocking news. "I'm going to die. Plus, it's not really going to go very well for you either." And they are confused. They are rattled. What did He just say?

You've got to understand, their expectations of what a Messiah would do were so different than what He is now revealing to them. I mean, they were still seeing Jesus in political and military terms. They thought He's the Messiah. So what He's going to do is He's going to write on Jerusalem. We just came into Jerusalem. And the people He's been speaking against who've been destroying our country for the last three years, He's been railing on the religious establishment. And He's been railing on how the Gentiles lord it over people. And that's not the way the kingdom of God works.

So clearly, what's next is He's going to kick out the religious establishment. He's going to kick out the Roman oppressors. He's going to set us free into a new golden age. And you know what? Nobody's going to be able to resist Him. Because we've seen Him calm the storm. We've seen Him heal the blind. We've seen Him raise the dead. There's no Roman legionnaire that can stand against this guy. So we're following in His wake to sure victory. And now He's telling us, yeah, that religious establishment and those Roman oppressors are about to destroy me. And this doesn't make any sense to them.

This is so contrary to any of their expectations about what Jesus is about, what God is about, what God's doing in their country and in their lives that they're completely...there's a total disconnect for them. And Jesus, who really is in need of strength and comfort at this moment, knowing what's ahead of Him, He instead has such sympathy for them. And so He wants to give them comfort so they can, well, stay strong and carry on through what's ahead for them.

And He gives them three realities, three promises that are going to give them hope. And especially if right now in your life, your hopes, your dreams, your expectations for reality, just...it's not going the way you planned it. And it's not making sense. It doesn't correspond to what you thought God would do. Well, that's exactly where these 11 men were at. And I think you will be richly blessed by what Jesus tells them in the last half of John 16.

Number one, He says, "You will have sorrow, but it will birth joy." Let's start in verse 16. Jesus says, "In a little while you will see Me no more, but then after a little while you will see Me." And at this, some of His disciples said to one another, "In a little while you'll see Me no more, and then after a little while you'll see Me." And because I'm going to the Father and they're whispering at each other, they kept asking, "What is He talking about? What does He mean?" We don't understand what He is saying, which...this sentence was spoken many, many times by the disciples. We don't understand Him. It's not making sense.

Verse 19, Jesus saw that they wanted to ask Him about this. They're whispering. So He said to them, "Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, 'In a little while you'll see Me no more, and after a little while you'll see Me?'" And then here it comes. Hear the words of comfort begin. Listen to this. "Truly, truly I say to you, you will weep. You will lament. And the world is going to rejoice, which is going to make it even worse. You will grieve." And what I love about Jesus Christ is He is so honest. Jesus never ever says, "Well, if you just follow Me, you're going to be able to just manifest goodness and glory and unicorns and rainbows and flowers. It's all going to be fantastic." No, life has ups and downs. It's not just ups and ups. And He's honest about this.

But He says, "Your sorrow will turn into joy." Now look very carefully at the way He says that. He does not say, "But your sorrow will be followed by joy." He says, "Your sorrow will turn into joy." Do you understand? That's a profound difference. It's not just, "Well, this is going to be one event. That's going to be a bummer. But there's going to be another event. That's going to be fantastic." The very thing that brings you sorrow is going to be the very thing that brings you joy. How's that happen? Well, Jesus uses an analogy. He says it's kind of like this. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come, but when her baby's born, she forgets the anguish because of the joy that a child is born into the world.

Now some of you are going, "Yeah, well, I didn't forget the anguish and I had a baby." The point is this, that it's the same thing that brought pain that also brings joy. You see, in our family we've had such a blessing because on average every year for the last seven years one of our children has said, "We're pregnant." It's just been a blessing, almost a baby a year. But all of the women in my family have gone through some difficult childbirths. I mean my wife and daughter and daughters-in-law, it hasn't been easy yet. Every single time we get the phone call, "We're pregnant. Everybody all just rejoices." Why? Because they know the end result is going to be the greatest joy we've ever known. One of our new granddaughters, for example, here is Willa.

Jesus is saying that's kind of what it's like. So with you, he says in the next verse, "Now's your time of grief, but I'll see you again. You'll rejoice. No one will be able to take away your joy then." So how did it work out for them? Well, the cross, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, of course, brought them such sorrow. But after the resurrection they saw this in a whole new light and their sorrow turned into joy. The very thing that made them sad now makes them glad because now they understand because Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Our sins are forgiven and our future is guaranteed. And all the things that Jesus was saying about himself suddenly makes sense. He's our Savior from spiritual death, not just some new governor of Jerusalem.

And they see the cross as something that brings hope. And you know, if you love art history, you know that one of the big mysteries of art history is how the cross within a generation or two turned into a universal symbol of hope. When people wear crosses around their necks now and for centuries and centuries and centuries, this has been the case, the cross means something positive. The cross means hope. The cross means God loves you. And a mystery kind of art is if you take away the resurrection of Jesus Christ, why did that happen? The cross was a symbol of the most horrible death and grief and sorrow. But as Jesus said, the sorrow turned into joy.

The very thing that devastated them became the very thing that gave them hope because they knew that by that they were saved. And I want you to see another thing that Jesus says here in this passage. He says, "You will weep. You will lament. You will grieve. You will have trouble." Have you ever thought about this? These are all promises from Jesus. We have His word on it. One of my pet peeves is we love to just lean into the positive promises of the Bible. You know, what do we send out? Memes on Facebook. We text things like, "Well, you know that in all things God works for the good and behold I'm with you always at the very end of the age." And I love these. These are true positive promises.

But kind of like just once I'd love to see like Facebook memes or refrigerator magnets that look like this. You know? Because it's like, "These are promises too." I'm only half joking because when we don't understand this is promise, then when we go through tough times sometimes, I mean as a pastor, sometimes I hear people say, "How can there be a God? Because I've got trouble in my life. How can there be a God? Because I'm grieving." Well, we have His word on it. That is going to happen. Listen, what I see a lot is that we tend to always look for a way out of our troubles, right? Well, Jesus was not promising these disciples in that room a way out. What He was promising them was a way through.

We're never promised a way out. We are promised a way through. And there's nothing wrong with praying for deliverance, but sometimes what we need to do is to not just pray for deliverance, but to pray for acceptance. That we're going through a trial, but Jesus promised a way through. Jesus promised, "I will see you again and you will rejoice and no one will be able to take away your joy." And you think about the apostles and that was exactly true, wasn't it? These same 11 people who were in that room completely scared as rabbits and denying Jesus within a few hours, those same 11 people rocketed out of that room starting on Sunday night and changed history.

And when you read the things that they wrote that survive in the rest of the New Testament, those verses are packed with joy. Why? Because they're like, "We've seen the risen Jesus. We know what's next and it's greater than anything that we ever imagined." They knew that in the light of the resurrection, no sorrow is final. Say that with me, "No sorrow is final." And this is not just academic. I know that some of you are going through a severe loss right now, grief. And this church cares for you and we have a specific group for you based on these principles. And it helps.

For example, I want you to hear the life story, the testimony of one of those people in that class. Here's Bob. Hi, I'm Bob Sleeper. I've been going to Twin Lakes for quite a while now. And about four years ago, I lost my wife to cancer. Deep grief is such a odd feeling and at my age, never really felt deep grief before, but I tell you, it hit me hard and it felt like you're walking through mud. You're affected, mind, body and spirit. It rocks you deep to your soul. It felt like my heart was so opened up, you could run a Mack truck through it. It had a big hole in it. And it took a long time just to get up and do anything. Just to get out of bed was a chore.

And if it wasn't for grief share and all the people there helping me, I don't know how I would even survive it. If you share when we meet in a group, you know you can talk to anybody because everybody there is going through it or has been through it. So they understand the people that we have there, we have people from different churches. We have people that don't believe in Christ. We have all kinds of people that have loss, whether it's loss of a child, loss of a spouse, loss of a parent. Some people have taken their grief and just buried it so deep that they haven't dealt with it and it finally comes alive.

When you bury your grief, you're buried alive and it's down inside you until you deal with it. It's been phenomenal for helping me get through what I'm getting through. Still going through it and now I'm one of the leaders there helping other people go through it also. If anybody's going through deep grief, I'd highly recommend going through grief share. I know my wife now is with the Lord and someday I'll be with her. But before that, I just wanted her back. It was so hard. But now I'm just waiting to get to her and I know heaven is going to be one of the best places around and I can't wait to see her again. Amen.

Bob knows this truth. You will have sorrow, but it will birth joy. But very quickly there's two other very important things Jesus does to comfort his disciples. Number two, he says you will misunderstand. You will be confused, but one day you will see clearly. Go down to verse 25 in chapter 16. He says, "Though I've been using figures of speech," Jesus always used poetic imagery. For example, he said things like, "Though just as Jonah was in the belly of the beast for three days, so the Son of Man must be in the grave." The disciples had no context for understanding what he was talking about. "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it again." What? That's a complete flyover, Jesus, right?

Though I've been speaking in figures of speech, the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech, but will tell you plainly about the Father. He's like, "There's going to be a day when you get it." And of course for them, that was Easter Sunday. He was right. Now we get it, Jonah, the beast, that was the grave. Oh, now we get the temple destroyed, raised again. That was your body. Oh, of course. The resurrection made everything just kind of ratchet into place for them. Now watch this. Because of what Jesus was about to do on the cross for us, he says, "In that day you will ask in my name, and I'm not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf."

What is he getting at there? He's saying, "Because of what I do on the cross, you're going to be able to go directly into the presence of God. You won't need to have any intermediary anymore." Remarkable. All through the New Testament it talks about this, like in Hebrews 10, "By his death Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place." To let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts, fully trusting Him. Wow. Jesus is saying, "You can go right into the Holy of Holies because of what I do on the cross. You're now covered with my righteousness, holy and blameless in God's sight."

Now you might say, "Why did God choose me to do something like that for me?" Well Jesus tells us in the next verse, verse 27, he says, "No, the Father Himself loves you." You didn't have to do anything great to earn this. Jesus died on the cross for your sins because God loves you. Now this is even cooler than you can tell in the English because the word in Greek for loved is not the word you would expect if you're talking about the divine love of God. It's not agape, unconditional, eternal divine love. This is the word "phile," which is the Greek word for family love, deep affection for a sibling or a child. In other words, you could say, "It's cool to know that God loves you, but it's kind of even cooler to know God likes you. God likes you like as His own child."

And what's more, this word loves is in the present tense, so He continually loves you and likes you. The Father Himself loves you. What a great comfort this is if you're going through grief. It's like, "Man, I may have times in my life when I'm not sure that many people do love me or like me, but if I know that the Father Himself likes me and loves me like that, man, I'm going to be okay." The Father Himself loves you because you have loved me, Jesus says, and I believe that I came from God. This is the Christian faith. We make it so complicated. We love Jesus. The Lord loves us. It's all about love. What a comfort if you're going through a tough time.

I know you will grieve and mourn. It's going to be tough, but God loves you. Can you sit in that? You know, once when I was speaking in Uganda at a missionary conference, I met a man named Ron Pontier. This is Ron right there. Ron was a missionary aviation fellowship pilot, a pilot for missionaries like doctors and pastors and teachers and nurses. I flew them all over the continent of Africa. Well, once Ron was kidnapped and held for ransom by terrorists in Africa, and when there was not a forthcoming negotiation for him as a hostage, the time was set for his execution by beheading just a few weeks away.

Well, obviously Ron survived because I was able to talk to him about it. I said, "Ron, how in the world do you face a frightening future like that where every day you wake up it's part of the countdown until you're beheading?" Well, Ron told me, "Well, honestly, the first several days in captivity, he was angry, afraid, bargaining with God. 'God, how can you allow this? You need me,' he said. 'I'm the best pilot in Africa.'" And he said it was almost as if he could hear God say, "I need you. I can raise pilots out of these rocks if I have to. I don't love you because of your skill. I just love you."

And Ron told me that there in that cell he had a spiritual awakening. It was as if God was saying, "All I want you to do right now, Ron, is just receive my love. Just sense that I'm with you, and I love you infinitely in this moment. Ron, you are more important to me than anything you do." And Ron told me that he found perfect peace in that prison cell, that he was going to be with the one who loved him so much, whether he died or whether he survived. And he said for days on end he just had private little worship services where he would sing worship songs. And just he said it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, just being bathed in the love of God.

And then the night before his scheduled execution, something happened that sounds like something right out of the Bible. The area he was in was bombed, and a whole section of the wall of the building where his prison cell was just fell down intact, boom, outward. And Ron was unscathed, and Ron just walked out unharmed right into the jungle, and he came across counter-revolutionary forces, and they said, "Who are you?" And he said, "I think I'm the guy you just came to rescue." But what really saved him was back in the prison cell, when he was able to see himself not as Ron Pontier's superhero for God, needed in Africa, but simply as child of God, loved by him. That brought him comfort.

You know what that looks like? It looks like this. Can you crawl into the arms of your Savior who loves you? Jesus goes on, "I came from the Father and entered the world, and now I'm leaving the world and going back to the Father." And then his disciples said, "Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech. Now we can see that you know all things and don't even need to have anybody ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God." They're starting to feel the fog lift just a little bit for them, and they're starting to understand that the promise of Jesus is no sorrow is final, and no confusion is final.

One day you will see clearly, and they're starting to sense that and believe in it. Now wouldn't it be great if the upper room discourse just closed this way? They finally get it. We finally celebrate the end. But that's not where it ends, because point three finally is, "You will fail Jesus, but Jesus will never fail you." Watch this. "Do you now believe?" Jesus replied, "Do you? Really?" Well, a time is coming, and in fact has now come, when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. You're all going to desert me. The spokesman over here is going to deny me three times. You're all going to run, yet I'm not going to be alone, for my father is with me."

He knew they were not really going to support him in his hour of greatest need. And then he says, "I have told you these things. What things?" Well, that they were all going to run. "I've told you this so that you may feel guilty when it happens?" No. "So that in me you may have peace." I mean, how powerful is that? When they fall, he doesn't want them to go slinking away. "I'm such a terrible Christian. Jesus probably just hates me." He says, "No, no, no, no. You're going to totally blow it, but I know it. So don't freak out. I know you're going to leave me all alone, and I still love you." Wow.

That tells me when you fall, Jesus knew you were going to, and Jesus welcomes you back. Final verse of the chapter, "In this world you will have trouble." Pressure, stress. You're going to go through it. But take heart, "I have overcome the world." Notice he doesn't say, "But take heart, you can overcome the world too. Just try harder next time." No, he says, "Take heart, I have overcome the world." The world will overcome you. But take heart, "I have overcome, I faced your enemy and I vanquished him. I routed the foe. I defeated death. I conquered the grave, and my victory can be your victory. That's our comfort in sorrow. We are so weak, but he is strong.

Amen. And that guarantees us you will have sorrow, but it will birth joy and you will misunderstand. But one day you'll see clearly, and yes, you'll even fail Jesus. But Jesus will never fail you because no sorrow is final, no confusion is final, and in Christ no failure need be final. Amen.

My grandmother kept any further discussion of Jesus at arm's length to the very end of her life. "But Grandma, you made that statue of Jesus." Yeah, don't bring it up. I've told some of you that after a series of strokes that she had that my grandmother had, my mother went back to Switzerland to care for her and grandmother had gotten to the point where she was no longer able to speak. But my mom said, "Are you interested in receiving Christ as your Savior? If you are, I'm going to pray a prayer out loud and I know you can't talk, but you can maybe sort of think it along with me. Dear Jesus, thank you for your love for me. I believe and receive you now. Amen."

And unexpectedly after my mom said, "Amen, Grandma, my sarcastic atheist grandma began rocking back and forth like a baby like this and sang through tears of joy and laughter. "Yesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus." And those were the final words my mother or anyone else ever heard her say. You know what I think happened in that moment? Well, this. I think she finally crawled in the arms of the Jesus that she belonged to believe in her whole life. Jesus is real. Would you like peace in your turmoil? Just be in the arms of your loving Lord. Let's pray together.

Would you bow your heads with me? Holy Father, thank you for your unconditional love. And we pray for those joining us online or in this room who are going through tough, tough times. And I pray that these words, not my words, but the time-tested words of Jesus would comfort right now. And God, I pray that if there's anybody who wants to receive Christ right now, they would pray that simple prayer as well. "Dear Jesus, thank you for your love for me. I believe and receive you now." Because it's as simple as just allowing ourselves to be loved and comforted by you, Jesus. You are loving and living Lord. And it's in your name that we pray. Amen.